By CRAIG FREILICH

A Colton man on a leave of absence from his job with Brookfield Renewable Power is putting life back into an old riverboat in Louisiana.

Mike Sutton has been helping restore a steam engine for the 436-passenger American Queen, which The Great American Steamboat Company plans to take on river cruises beginning next spring.

“I’ve been helping with getting the steam engines and boilers certified with the Coast Guard,” said Sutton, a 1999 graduate of Colton-Pierrepont Central School who then went to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy at Cape Cod.

It’s not an easy task, said Sutton. The engines they are using were salvaged from “an old 1933 dredge boat” that had been sitting on the bottom of the Missouri River.

They have been cleaning it up and rebuilding it, working in the machine shop and inside the boiler, “getting it back up to rated horsepower.”

It’s not new to Sutton. “I’ve worked on a project like this before,” he said. He served as an apprentice for the Delta Queen Steamboat Company in the mid-1990s, and his work with steam engines has been highly praised.

But his 90-day leave is about up. He said he expects to be back at his regular job on a maintenance crew for Brookfield Power out of Potsdam in a week or two.

The Great American Steamboat Company says the American Queen was the largest, most lavish steamboat ever built.

The boat will begin plying the waters between river cities like Memphis, New Orleans, Vicksburg, St. Louis, St. Paul, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, including specially themed tours, beginning in April. Luxury cruises will start at $995 per person.

The website is www.GreatAmericanSteamboatCompany.com.